Determinism. In my view, nothing can escape the deterministic nature of atoms. Our brains are built from the same building blocks as everything else. This goes against intuition, as I think we all have a sense of volition and self-awareness, but I believe these are just illusions. I think that these two concepts arise from the way our brains simulate the world. Most animals "think" by processing a mixture of past and present sensory inputs in elaborate simulations, and "choose" an appropriate action based on the furthering of their genes (genes which didn't cause thinking to work this way are more likely to have died out by now). Where more advanced human thinking differs is in the way that our simulation process involves a variable representing the body's own self. That is where I believe our sense of self-awareness comes from. Because our sense of self is involved in the simulation, we are able to experience the thought-process in action, seeing all of the choices and possible outcomes in front of us. The feeling of having made a "decision," however, comes only after the decision has already been made at the atomic level. In all following simulations, the body/self is "aware" that a course of action has been determined by the body/self. That is where the sense of volition comes from-- it's the realization that different actions/scenarios have been simulated and compared, resulting in all but one action eliminating themselves.

Having said that, I still believe in a philosophy where we are all accountable for our actions. I don't think that determinism is a valid excuse for dodging personal responsibility. But maybe that's a discussion for another day.

As I've mentioned in (and just copy-pasted from) another thread, determinism does not take into account the fact that humans are self-aware. Unlike purely deterministic systems that act entirely upon stimulus and response, we have the ability to examine our own thought processes - to see the gap between stimulus and response, action and reaction, and rewrite ourselves through our actions as we see fit. Unfortunately, not many fully develop the ability to do so.

It depends on weither or not there is such thing as 'random' I personally just dont know weither random exists or not. I remember reading an article in 'New Scientist' magazine a while ago about weitherthere is such thing as random events, it was talking about some atoms/particles/quarks (i dont know) spinning, and how some scientists believe that these things spin in random directions therefore, actions based on which way they spin could alter events (butterfly effect) and ipso facto random events. I think that if these do exist then yes you can have events that are not pre determined and therefore free will, but common sense (contradictory to most peoples common sense) tells me that of coarse everything is predetermined, not that there was some cosmic being ages ago who could see into the future, but that everything that is happening (and all my decisions) could not possibly happen differently because everything that happens is determined by what precedes it. Then again some theoretical physicists are telling us that every second an infinate amount of parallel universes are being created with different outcomes and happenings. My commen sense tells me this doesnt make sense, because our universe seems to ordered and consistent to be one of an infinate amount of possibilitys (if that makes sense?). For example with al these other universes imaginesome of them all lead up to this point then have a completely different turn of events, theoretically our universe is just another oneof those, but if it was i wouldnt ever be able to predict anything in the future, because it would be too random. Anyway that was my second post on this site, blabling on about nothing in particular. Anyway i hope you can at least understand what i am trying to say (i have not read anything i have just written and i do not plan on editing it for clarity).

i believe that within reasonable limits, the determinism and the "cause and effect" are the same........ there is a cause, and so it effects, which means that it's been determined that this has/will happen(ed)

my personal stand point: somethings are up to us, some aren't, when we look at quantum and gravitational physics we see 2 forms of physics studying the same things (on a different scale, yes) and getting different results, and so, depending on what it is chance (aka freewill) will take effect, or cause and effect (determinism) will take effect